Change the connection strings in MVC3 to publish in IIS

Question

I need to change the connection strings in my mvc proyect because is local and now I need publish in a server but I dont have idea how write the connection strings and they are the next

<add name="cnn" connectionString="Data Source=SISTEMAS-PC\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=FoodGroups;User ID=FoodGroup; Password=Food" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
<add name="DefaultConnection" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" connectionString="Data Source=(SISTEMAS-PC\SQLEXPRES)\v11.0;Initial Catalog=aspnet-MvcApplication1-20130730182253;Integrated Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=C:\Users\Sistemas\Desktop\proyectos TI\foodGroup2\foodGroup\App_Data" />
<add name="FoodGroupsEntities" connectionString="metadata=res://*/Model1.csdl|res://*/Model1.ssdl|res://*/Model1.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string=&quot;data source=SISTEMAS-PC\SQLEXPRESS;initial catalog=FoodGroups;user id=FoodGroup;password=Food;MultipleActiveResultSets=True;App=EntityFramework&quot;" providerName="System.Data.EntityClient" />

Answer 1

You have a web.config which should have a section for all your connection string.

What you need to do, is to have a web.release.config that will change the connection string when you build in release mode.

For example, web.config when you are debugging in your dev environment:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/.NetConfiguration/v2.0">
  <configSections>
 <connectionStrings>
      <add name="YourConnectionString"
           connectionString="Data Source=YourServer; initial catalog=YourDatabase; Integrated Security=True" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
 </connectionStrings>
</configSections>

And inside the web.release.config

<?xml version="1.0"?>

    <connectionStrings>
      <add name="YourConnectionString" 
        connectionString="Data Source=ReleaseSQLServer;Initial Catalog=MyReleaseDB;Integrated Security=True"        xdt:Transform="SetAttributes" xdt:Locator="Match(name)"/>
    </connectionStrings>

</configuration>

When you are building, you will see that the string "YourConnectionString" will be replaced. This way, you can deploy/publish your application depending of the build mode (debug or release) without having to modify your code and just relying on web.config.